


under the iron bridge

by oryx



Category: Kamen Rider Build
Genre: Identity Issues, M/M, Post-Canon, Recovered Memories, dealing with emotional trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 11:58:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16576031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oryx/pseuds/oryx
Summary: Conversations with the only person who truly understands.





	under the iron bridge

**Author's Note:**

> just... let me self-indulge for a little while

  
The call comes mid-afternoon on a Saturday. He glances at the number displayed on the screen and freezes, shoulders tensing. It’s a number he knows. Which shouldn’t be possible, not anymore, and in an instant his mind is turning itself over, frantically trying to piece together some rational explanation because surely this can’t be what he wants it to be –   
   
Slowly, he presses the Build Phone to his ear.  
   
“…Hello?”  
   
“Sento?” says Isurugi Soichi’s voice on the other end of the line. “That is you, isn’t it? I’d hoped this number would still be working.”  
   
There is a long moment of silence. Sento’s grip is painfully tight, rigid around the phone. His own breathing sounds impossibly loud.  
   
“Yeah,” he says finally, his voice coming out odd and thin. “This is still me.”  
   
There is a quiet, desperate relief to Soichi’s words as he says: “I thought as much.”  
   
  
   
  
   
This stretch of path overlooking the bay is quiet and all but empty today, for which he’s grateful. (Even in a crowd, though, he imagines he’d have no trouble seeking out Soichi.) He finds him sitting on one of the benches that line the path, ankle crossed over his knee, staring out at the water with a faraway look. Sento draws closer and sees more, then: the tightness in the line of his jaw, the dark shadows of tiredness beneath his eyes, the smoldering cigarette balanced between his fingertips.  
   
He notices Sento approaching and jumps to his feet, letting the cigarette fall and grinding it into the pavement, smiling in a way that only makes him look even more exhausted.  
   
“There you are.” He seems to be about to say something else, but falters. His smile wanes.  
   
They stare at one another for a time, something heavy sitting in the space between them.  
   
“Are you… doing alright, Sento?” he asks finally.  
   
Sento raises an eyebrow. “Feel like I should be asking you that question.”  
   
Soichi laughs, slightly taken aback, eyes crinkling at the corners, and Sento feels something flip disconcertingly in his stomach.  
   
“I guess I do look kind of rough, don’t I? I’ve had… a strange couple of days.” A deep weariness flickers across his face before he smoothes it away. “Care to sit down?”  
   
The sun has warmed the bench beneath his thighs as he takes a seat, eerily conscious of the space between the two of them.  
   
“You know, it’s strange. This is the first proper conversation we’ve ever really had with each other.”  
   
Sento doesn’t need to be reminded of that. It’s almost all he’s thought about, since receiving that phone call earlier. Sometimes he’s terribly envious of other people’s normal, linear lives, where first meetings always happen at the beginning like they rightly should.  
   
“Though it doesn’t feel like it,” he says breezily, and tries to change the subject: “When did you remember?”  
   
“It was… two days ago. I was just… reading the newspaper, of all things. Came across an article about some new scientific advancement, I can’t remember what exactly. But I saw one of the names listed: Katsuragi Takumi. And it was like… a key opening a locked door. Or something.”  
   
“Just like that?” Sento murmurs. “You’d think it would be more of a process.” He crosses his arms with a thoughtful frown. “Maybe because of your closeness to Evolt? An issue of proximity?” An issue of familiarity. Him being erased affected some of us more than others, he thinks but does not say. “It wasn’t all at once, right? Did you remember Katsuragi first, then?”  
   
“Mostly. I remembered his face. I remembered being in his house.” A pause. “I remembered killing someone there.”  
   
Sento glances up sharply. Soichi’s expression is tense and drawn again, mouth set in a thin line. His wrist is resting against his knee, an attempt at seeming casual, but his fingers are shaking badly.  
   
“Actually, I think I might need another cigarette,” he mutters, reaching into his pocket. “Do you mind?”  
   
“No, not at all,” Sento says quickly. “You… smoke?”  
   
“Not for a long time. I probably don’t look it, but I had a bit of a delinquent phase as a kid.” Sento finds himself staring as he places the cigarette between his lips, resting there as his trembling fingers struggle with the lighter, finally flaring to life on the fifth attempt. “I gave it up when I decided I wanted to go to space. And I never really thought about it since. Until… yesterday, apparently.” He smiles ruefully as he exhales, grey smoke cutting through the air. “Stress will do odd things to you, I guess.”  
   
There’s a tight feeling in Sento’s throat. He leans back against the bench, feeling suddenly very heavy, as if there were lead in his veins. He drags a hand down his face. “This is why,” he says quietly. “This is why I didn’t want any of you to remember.  
   
“I mean. I did, in a selfish sort of way,” he admits a moment later. “Because I miss everyone.”  
   
It’s jarring, to say it out loud. He and Banjou don’t talk about feelings much. It’s an unspoken rule of sorts between the two of them. To sidestep around the obvious sadness looming over them. To just keep going as if nothing were wrong.  
   
“But at the same time,” he continues. “The things that happened there… I thought it would be better, if you never knew. You seemed so happy, last time I saw you. And now…”  
   
He can feel Soichi looking at him steadily. “It’s only fair, really. You two shouldn’t be the only ones dealing with this. Not after what you did. The very least the rest of us can do is remember.” His hand comes to rest on Sento’s knee for a moment, warm and broad, and Sento’s pulse jumps. “It’s a new world, Sento. You don’t have to take everything on yourself anymore.”  
   
“…How did this turn into you comforting me?” Sento asks, his voice breaking just a bit.  
   
Soichi laughs. “I guess that’s a fair point. Maybe I’m not in a place to be saying things like that.” He stares down wryly at the cigarette held in his hand. “Clearly I’m not dealing very well.”  
   
“It’s… a lot to recall at once,” Sento says carefully.  
   
Soichi hums in agreement. “My life was definitely easier a week ago before I remembered being a despicable murderer, that’s for certain.”  
   
“That’s – it wasn’t you.” Sento says this with more feeling than he means to, the words coming out angry, almost. Desperate. “You were – ”  
   
“You still feel guilty, too, don’t you? For the man who died when you used that black form. You weren’t in control, either. But it was still your hands that did it.”  
   
Sento stares at him. His breath is stuck in his chest as something goes taut inside him, like a wire pulled too tight, about to snap. Soichi seems to come back to himself, then, from some other place, his eyes widening, giving him an apologetic smile.  
   
“I’m sorry. It’s… pretty cruel, to bring that up now.”  
   
“No,” Sento says, voice thick. “You’re right. But. It’s still not the same, is it? I chose to use the Hazard Trigger. You didn’t choose any of it.”  
   
Soichi’s expression softens as he looks at him. “You make too many excuses for other people, Sento. I think about everything you went through, and it seems… Unforgivable. My own weakness. Why didn’t I try harder? What might’ve changed if I hadn’t stopped struggling?”  
   
“You can’t say that – ” Sento starts to say, but Soichi shakes his head.  
   
He’s getting to his feet a second later, running a hand through his hair as he takes a shuddering breath. “I… should probably get back. We get busy on Saturdays, and I just went and left Misora alone.” He hesitates; reaches into his back pocket to take out an envelope, which he presses firmly into Sento’s palm. When their eyes meet there’s an intensity there that sends a shiver down the back of his neck. “Take care of yourself, Sento. Please.”  
   
Sento watches him walk away until he turns around a curve in the path and vanishes from sight.  
   
He opens the envelope a minute later to find 100,000 yen in cash tucked inside. A note in between two of the bills says simply:  _Contact me if you need more._  
   
“What the hell,” he murmurs, staring down at it with his eyes prickling. “This isn’t what I wanted from you at all.”  
   
  
   
  
   
He doesn’t tell Banjou where he got the money. Later, he’ll try and convince himself that there was a good, logical reason for keeping silent.  
   
Deep down he knows there wasn’t. Deep down he knows what this feeling is: of wanting something (someone) to be just for him and him alone.  
   
He waits a week hoping for another call, checking his phone almost obsessively as Banjou shoots him odd glances. When he receives none he resolves to take matters into his own hands, texting  _Meet me in the same place in 30 mins?_  and shutting his phone off before he can see if an answer arrives.  
   
He should maybe be a bit embarrassed, he thinks, at the bone-deep relief he feels when Soichi actually does show.  
   
“You’d better not try and foist more money on me,” Sento says in lieu of a greeting, and Soichi’s lips twitch into a small smile. He looks better today – less exhausted and anxious, his hair and outfit once again neat and impeccable, just like Sento remembers. But there’s still something subdued about him in a way that feels subtly wrong. Like a light that’s been turned down one notch lower than usual.  
   
“Only if you need it.” He leans against the railing next to him. The murky water of the bay sloshes beneath them. “You did use it, right? Can’t imagine you two have much to live on.”  
   
Sento presses his mouth into a thin line. “Yes,” he admits finally. “We did use some of it. But you still shouldn’t have – ”  
   
“It’s not what you think, Sento. I’m just… worried about you. That’s all. I know you probably wouldn’t come back to the café right now even if I offered. Because of Misora, right? You don’t want her to remember.” Something on Sento’s face must give him away, because Soichi nods to himself, continues: “So at least I can give you something so I know you aren’t sleeping on the streets.” He levels him with a pained sort of look. “And even if it was some kind of reparations… You’d deserve it.”  
   
Something in the way he says this gives Sento pause. He stares back at him with a sinking sense of dismay in the pit of his stomach.  
   
“You… How much do you remember, exactly?” For some reason he’d thought… Only the basics, surely. Ten entire years’ worth of memories flooding back are going to be missing the details, here and there. Isn’t that how normal human cognitive function should work? But Soichi is glancing away uncomfortably, watching the water with a tense set to his shoulders.  
   
“Enough,” he answers.  
   
“Ah,” Sento says.  
   
Well that’s awkward, then.  
   
“I… know how it probably seems, from your perspective.” His words are stilted. They sound all wrong. “But I promise it wasn’t like that. He never forced me.” He can feel his mouth twist into a grimace. “It definitely wasn’t – healthy, or anything, but. I always wanted it. Unfortunately.”  
   
“Sento,” Soichi says. Soft, but like a warning.  
   
“You get why, right? Because I loved him.” His mouth is dry; something seems to get caught in his throat as he swallows. “I loved him pretending to be you.”  
   
Soichi closes his eyes for a long moment. His knuckles are white where he’s gripping the railing.  
   
“That was… a hard time for you. You didn’t have any memories. You didn’t have any connections. He was preying on that, Sento. He was using my face to be the person that you needed most.”  
   
“Are you saying you wouldn’t have picked me up off the street? I know you would ha – ”  
   
“I’m saying you wouldn’t have been there in the first place if it wasn’t for him!” His voice is almost a shout, suddenly, caustic and bitter in a way that Sento has never heard before from him. There’s something raw about the look on his face. Wounded. It fades away gradually into a tired kind of sadness as he says, quieter now: “If it wasn’t for me.”  
   
Sento’s chest aches. “So what?” he says softly.  
   
Soichi blinks.  
   
“So what?” Sento repeats, with more conviction this time. “As a physicist I hate to say this, but. Maybe emotions are realer than the truth, sometimes.  
   
“I lived through that thinking of him as… someone special to me. Someone who saved me. Named me. Just because it was an act doesn’t mean I didn’t feel something real for him – for you. His impression was pretty spot-on, after all. And I never stopped feeling it, even after I knew the reality. These things… don’t just disappear.”  
   
Soichi stares back at him like he’s just been slapped across the face.  
   
“You… did  _you_  ever feel anything?” Sento asks, anxiety beginning to creep back up his spine.  
   
“God, of course I did,” Soichi murmurs. He reaches out after a moment of hesitation to take Sento’s hand in his own, turning it over. He runs his thumb over the lines of his palm, absentminded almost, and it’s like pinpricks of electricity running up the length of his arm. “Every day, I… wished it was really me, helping you. And it might as well have been. That’s the worst part. That almost all of it was… things I would’ve done, and said.” His smile is sour. “It really was a spot-on impression. He was so good at being me.  
   
“It was easier, once the truth came out. I could just feel sick instead of confused, then. Whenever he was with you. I could be angry that you cared so little about yourself that you would still let him touch you – ”  
   
He falters, the heat in his voice seeming to snap his words in half.  
   
Sento’s pulse is loud in his ears. “What can I say?” he says weakly. “He was just so handsome.”  
   
Soichi’s laugh is sharp and startled. “You’re too – ” he starts, but Sento never gets to find out what he is. Voices of other people drag the both of them back into the present, Soichi dropping Sento’s hand as if it were hot to the touch, turning away to look out at the water again, the line of his shoulders taut and rigid. Sento can feel the eyes of the parents who pass by lingering on the two of them before they are blessedly distracted by their young daughter yelling for them to hurry up.  
   
He’d almost forgotten that there were other people in the world.  
   
“…I’ll see you soon, Sento,” Soichi says, after a moment of silence, giving him a small, tense smile. “If you run out of money, you know where to find me.”  
   
“As if I’d ask,” Sento mutters, and Soichi huffs out a laugh as he turns away, lifting a hand in parting.  
   
He wonders if it’s going to keep ending like this. Watching him walk away with nothing having been resolved.  
   
Maybe that’s just how it was meant to be.  
   
He never would’ve thought anything like that, in the other world.  
   
  
   
  
   
He doesn’t realize he’s spacing out until a hand is waved in front of his face. He snaps back to himself with a start, then, his eyes focusing again, the colours of their ugly motel room curtains no longer a muddled blur; turns to find Banjou staring at him with a frown.  
   
“Oi, Sento… You okay, man?”  
   
Sento attempts to stretch some of the stress from his shoulders; runs a hand through his hair with a sigh. “Fine,” he says. “Just. Tired, I guess.”  
   
“Sure, but. You’ve kinda been like this for a few days now.”  
   
Sento taps his pen against the papers spread in front of him. The script for Kamen Rider Build episode twelve is not coming along as easily as the first eleven did. The words just keep escaping him, somehow. Sifting through his mind like water through a sieve.  
   
“Banjou,” he says slowly. “Deep down… What did you really feel towards him?”  
   
Banjou’s frown deepens. “…Towards who?”  
   
Sento looks at him in thoughtful silence. That’s about the answer he’d expected, really, but it still makes something ache in his chest. Makes him feel even more tired than he’d been a moment ago. Wrung out, might be a better way to put it. As if someone’s hands had squeezed every bit of energy from his body; left him worn and limp.  
   
“Forget it,” he says finally, plastering on a thin-lipped smile. “It’s not important, really.”  
   
  
   
  
   
 _Misora is out for the night. Drop by if it’s convenient for you._  
   
Sento stares down at the words with an unnamable emotion prickling at the back of his neck. He keeps trying to infer some deeper meaning from them, which only makes him feel more ridiculous. Is he a teenager? He supposes he did miss out on the exaggerated emotions and pedantry of that age. His memories from then are vague, but they mostly involve self-study. Sitting alone in the library. Ignoring his peers. He never would’ve been so boring, but he hadn’t been himself quite yet.  
   
Maybe he’s making up for it now.  
   
None of his “what if”s matter, in the end, since he’s already here. He steps down off the bus – his thoughts in a fog as they’ve been, driving hadn’t felt wise – onto that familiar stretch of street. There’s still people out, even as the city around them grows darker. That’s something that keeps taking him aback. Maybe some part of his mind is permanently stuck in wartime Touto, where people would vanish into their homes and lock their doors as soon as the sunset faded.  
   
Nascita is just as it was. Only the sign outside, advertising the daily specials – an Americano blend and fresh croissants – is at all changed from the last time he was here. The bell chimes over his head as he pushes the door open and steps inside. It’s empty, a single, dim light shining down on the counter, but a moment later Soichi sticks his head out from the back room.  
   
“I thought you might show,” he says with a smile. “Welcome home.”  
   
Sento takes a sharp breath. It’s like a blow to the chest, almost; if he didn’t feel rooted to the spot he would’ve staggered from it.  
   
Immediately, Soichi’s face falls. “Ah. Maybe… I shouldn’t say that?”  
   
“No,” Sento says quickly. “No, it’s…” He clears his throat. “It’s good, actually.” When he smiles in return, it feels genuine for the first time in weeks. “I’m glad to be home.”  
   
Soichi gives him a soft, contemplative look before nodding. “You can come on back. I’m just finishing up the bookkeeping.”  
   
He disappears once more into the back room, leaving Sento to follow after him. (He finds himself checking the fridge as he passes by. Only ingredients, of course.)  
   
This room had housed an actual, working refrigerator in the other world, but in this one looks more like a study: filing cabinets, shelves lined with binders and books about money management and entrepreneurship, along with a few select others that stand out at a glance. The spine on one reads  _An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth_.  
   
“Sorry, it’s not exactly comfortable back here,” Soichi says. He’s seated at the desk, distractedly typing something into the calculator in front of him before scribbling the result into a notebook.  
   
“I don’t mind,” Sento murmurs. There’s one other chair leaning against the wall, straight-backed and wooden, and he takes a seat, sitting there running his hands over his thighs with a knot of tension forming between his shoulderblades.  
   
“I made you do this for me a few times, I remember,” Soichi says, amusement in his voice as he taps at the calculator, but abruptly he stops; freezes with his fingertips hovering just above it. His smile fades. “Or. He did, I suppose.”  
   
Sento lets out a shaky breath. “Soichi-san,” he says. “Can I ask… What did you really feel towards him?”  
   
Soichi seems to consider this, still staring down at the notebook on the desk in front of him.  
   
“I hated him, of course,” he says. “But. What do they call it? Stockholm syndrome?” The curve of his mouth has a wry twist to it. “It’s odd to think about. It’s not like I was chained up in a basement somewhere. I was right there, surrounded by all of you, but… For ten years, nothing I wanted to say reached anyone but him. It was… a strange kind of loneliness. But it still messed with my head.  
   
“I think I do get what you meant, the other day. About emotions. I… spent all those years  _knowing_  he was responsible for everything terrible in my life. In Misora’s life. And yet still, I. I was glad he was there, sometimes.” A heavy pause. “It’s hard, hating someone who takes up that much space in your world. When you don’t have much that feels real other than them.”  
   
Sento can feel the knot loosening between his shoulders. Left behind in its place is a kind of exhaustion that he can’t quite put into words – like he’s finally stopped for a rest after running for miles.  
   
“It’s not like I… still think of him as my ‘creator,’” he says softly. “I’m past that. My friends are the ones who really made Kiryu Sento. But. It’s hard to remember that, in this world. If only one of them knows me anymore, then who am I?” He shakes his head. “And he still… formed some part of me. No matter much I try to deny it. In a universe where he never existed, I’m just. Missing something. I’m missing too much to be a real person.”  
   
His words seem to hang like dark clouds in the air, and Soichi sighs, a fondness undercutting the exasperation, turning his chair to face him.  
   
“Sento,” he says. “Come here.”  
   
His heart is in his throat as he obliges. Soichi’s hand reaches out for him, curling around his hip and tugging him closer. He smiles, expression soft, and the back of Sento’s neck goes warm. When he drops to his knees between his thighs it feels like relief. This part is easy. This part he knows.  
   
But Soichi is catching him by the wrists. Sento tilts his head up to find the smile vanished from his face. He looks stricken. “Sento, god, that’s… That’s not what I want from you right now.”  
   
Soichi’s hands are cupping his face a moment later, palms pressed firm and warm against his jawline as he meets his gaze head-on.  
   
“Just listen to me. You… Whatever piece of you he made, it doesn’t compare to the rest. And however the others shaped you, it’s still there. Maybe this is something you have to realize for yourself, and me saying it defeats the point, but… I was there, from the beginning. I knew you then. And I see you now. You’ve always been yourself. Now you just seem more.”  
   
Sento can feel his eyes widen. Suddenly they’re stinging, and he tries to blink it away.  
   
“You, too,” he says hoarsely. “I was wrong. About his impression. It was alright, but. You’re better, at being you.”  
   
Soichi makes a noise halfway between a choked sob and a laugh.  
   
“That’s about the best compliment I could hope for, I suppose,” he murmurs. He slides his arms back to wrap around Sento’s shoulders, maybe just a little too tight, burying his face against his neck. Sento’s hands drift up to rest against his back, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing. He closes his eyes.  
   
“My knees are… kind of starting to hurt,” he says, a minute later, and Soichi’s laugh is warm against his skin.  
   
“Sorry.” A beat. “Do you want a coffee, Sento? I feel like I owe you. For all those awful cups you put up with.”  
   
He did drink a lot of bad coffee back then, didn’t he. It had felt so normal, then, just a part of life, but maybe. Maybe he’d deserved better.  
   
“That sounds really good, actually,” he says, and Soichi lifts him back to his feet.


End file.
